I have known the name Merriam for 65 years since I kept a Merriam’s Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys merriami), a wonderful animal, for several years. For anybody unfamiliar with kangaroo rats, they are essentially bipedal, parallel evolution versions of the jerboas. Until I was looking up pocket gophers a few weeks ago after out trip to Mexico I had not given Clinton Hart Merriam much attention. To my surprise I found there was a family connection to an important figure in the conservation of Hong Kong and world wildlife in the latter half of the 20th entry.
CLINTON HART MERRIAM (1855-1942) is remembered as important figure in American mammalogy. However, he had wide interests in just about anything alive before while working as a family doctor. By what was clearly a bit of political help from his cousin, a senator, and his friend, Theodore Roosevelt, he became the first chief of what became Division of Biological Survey of the US Department of Agriculture, a post he held for 25 years. In later life though he abandoned these pursuits for ethnology, having become fascinated by the indigenous inhabitants of California and the western parts of the USA.
These days Merriam is often referred to as an out of control ‘splitter’ and erector of new species. Thus he described 86 species of jus the one Brown Bear in North America. Clearly though Merriam was important in both the natural history of North America and in the conservation of wildlife.
![]() |
Clinton Hart Merriam |
It was Merriam's grandson, LEE MERRIAM TALBOT (1930-2021) who was to have such an important role in world wildlife conservation, becoming head of IUCN from 1980 to 1983 and leading key pieces of U.S. and international legislation. Talbot was the action man of conservation in the early 1960s while working for IUCN, researching the status of endangered animals and habitats in many parts of reports while producing reports for governments and conservation bodies. In that work he worked closely with his wife, Marty (born 1932). South-east Asia was a particular focus in the early 1960s and his report for the Agriculture and Fisheries Department of the Hong Kong Government was produced as the result of, what I read, was a three-week trip in 1965.
Reports indicate that the work for the report was not without incident:
“While conducting an aerial survey for the government of British Hong Kong in the early 1960s, his plane experienced mechanical problems, and crash landed in a harbor, hitting rocks and pinwheeling through the cold, frothing water,” explained his son Russell. “He swam to safety, later describing in vivid detail the difficulty of determining which direction was up, while escaping the still-tumbling wreckage.”
![]() |
Lee Merriam Talbot from HERE |
Lee Talbot was also a racing driver. He began at the age of 18 and had his last race at the age of 87. It seems 1965 was an unfortunate year. An account of motor racing accidents shows that in 4 July 1965 while he was based in Hong Kong he walked away from an accident that may well have killed him. In a Formule Libre race in Malaysia his Lotus Super-7 ran off the road and overturned into a drain, pinning Talbot under the car. His high quality helmet kept the weight of the car off his head. Another driver was killed in the same race
The Talbots’ work in south-east Asia all came together at a conference in Bangkok on 29 November-4 December 1965 organised by IUCN. The Talbots edited the proceedings which appeared in 1968. By the time the conference was held he had been recruited as ‘Smithsonian Field Representative for International Affairs in Ecology and Conservation’ in Washington DC.
Nothing happened to implement the Talbots’ report until the 1970s. The Hong Kong government was soon dealing with the communist-inspired riots of 1967 and their aftermath. The administrators of the time were not known for alacrity in their attitude to change and it was not until Murray MacLehose was appointed governor in1971 that much was done. Then work started on the Country Parks for recreation and conservation envisaged in 1965. The Country Parks Ordinance came into effect in 1976 with the first parks officially designated in 1977. At present there are 24 covering an area of 440 square kilometres.
Reading between the lines I suspect the Talbot report was the necessary icing on the cake of a movement within Hong Kong to create areas suitable for recreation and conservation. The pressure to obtain an external expert report seems likely to have come from individuals within the Hong Kong government itself, from the several amateur societies concerned with wildlife and the countryside (of which government officials were also members) and members of the university (there was only one then) staff from the botany, geography and zoology departments. Plans for some protected areas/parks had already been drawn up by the time the Talbots arrived for their short visit.
In 2013 Lee Talbot himself explained (HERE) the intergenerational interest in wildlife and conservation:
I grew up in a conservation family with endangered species conservation as part of my heritage. My maternal grandfather was Dr. C. Hart Merriam, founder and first head of the Biological Survey which became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A pioneer ecologist, he may be best known for the life zone theory of distribution of plants and animals which was a foundation of ecology for perhaps a half century. My mother was an ethnologist and naturalist, very concerned with conservation. And my father, M.W. Talbot, was a pioneer range and wildlife ecologist who, after years of field work in the southwest, was director of the California Forest and Range Experiment Station, the research branch of the U.S. Forest Service, and a professor at University of California, Berkeley. A lifelong conservationist, in 1924 he worked with his Forest Service friend, Aldo Leopold, initiating the Gila, the nation’s first wilderness area; helped with the early days of the Wilderness Society; was a founder of the Society for Range Management; and constantly worked for conservation and science-based sustainable management of the nation’s forests and rangelands.
Hiking, camping and pack trips in the wilderness with the wonderful conservation and ecological insights and guidance of my parents was an integral part of my early years….
![]() |
The Country Parks of Hong Kong in 2025 from HERE |